Working to Find the Last of a Lofty Stack of Leaflets

After rising at 4 a.m., Angel Malave has a cup of coffee, then makes his way to the train stop from his apartment in the Pelham Parkway neighborhood in the Bronx. More than an hour later — the ride requires him to take three trains — he is at a corner in Mott Haven, still in the Bronx, where he waits for the vans driven by men looking for workers.

Some days Mr. Malave, 33, waits for hours without being offered a job. But most days, a van will take him and about six other workers to a location not far away, usually in Queens, where the driver hands each of them a tall stack of fliers. They are told to leave at least one flier at every residence on an assigned route.

If there is a gate, the flier is rolled up and stuck inside. If there is a mail slot, the flier is dropped through. In an apartment building, fliers are left in the lobby or entryway.

Sometimes he distributes booklets of coupons in plastic coverings, other times advertisements with no casing. Mr. Malave pays no attention to what’s written on the fliers — he neither speaks nor reads English — but he does notice the photographs: flat-screen televisions, digital cameras and laptop computers that he cannot afford to buy.

After his first stack runs out, an hour or so into the workday, he uses his cellphone to call in his location to the van driver, who is parked somewhere nearby. The driver’s job is to resupply the workers and to make sure they are not dumping the fliers.

When the van runs out of fliers, the driver returns to one of several warehouses and picks up more. This is repeated until all the fliers are gone. Mr. Malave says he works 12 hours a day, four or five days a week.

To get paid, Mr. Malave must again take the long train ride to Mott Haven on Monday, the first of his two or sometimes three consecutive days off. There, on a sheet kept by a manager, Mr. Malave records the time of his arrival, usually around noon.

If the company has enough money to pay their employees that week, a van brings cash around 4 p.m. And if, according to the sheet, Mr. Malave was among the first to show up, he is likely to get paid for the previous week’s work, $7.15 an hour.

Sometimes Mr. Malave’s name is too low on the sheet, and the cash runs out, so Mr. Malave must return the following day. “You don’t want to be on the bottom half of the list,” he says.

Sometimes he does not get paid promptly and falls behind on rent, which is $150 a week for a small room, utilities included. Still, he says, he does not like to ask for help.

He came to New York a year ago from the small town of Caguas in Puerto Rico, where he painted houses. He said that there was little work there, and he wanted to come to a place where there were more opportunities.

When he ended up in a homeless shelter on Wards Island for a few months this year, he did not want to apply for public assistance, but it was required by the shelter.

Photo

Angel Malave, who came to New York last year, distributes fliers for $7.15 an hour. He plans to attend English classes soon.Credit
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

“I had my health,” he says. “I could work.”

After he showed up every day for two weeks at the corner in Mott Haven, on foot from Wards Island, one of the regular day laborers did not show up and the company let him work for the day. He has been working the job ever since.

He did recently accept $1,500 of help from the Mosholu-Montefiore Community Center, a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York. UJA-Federation is one of seven organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Money drawn from the fund went toward Mr. Malave’s back rent, a winter coat and gloves, boots and a cellphone.

The 107th annual campaign of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund is under way and ends in January 2019. This year, articles in the campaign are outside our paywall, and we hope you will read and share them.